Virginia's Attorney General tried to get all of climate researcher Mike Mann's …

The climate researcher Michael Mann last worked at the University of Virginia in 2005, but his past employment has continued to haunt him. Virginia's attorney general, Kenneth Cuccinelli decided that, in the wake of some of Mann's work e-mails being released, he'd like to see more of them. So, he sued UVa under Virginia's Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA), claiming that Mann had engaged in fraudulent activity. A preliminary ruling had blocked the suit, as Cuccinelli was unable to specify whether there was any actual fraud to investigate. Cuccinelli appealed, and the Virginia Supreme Court has now officially thrown out the suit.

The ruling indicates that the suit was flawed from the start. The statute in question allows suits that target persons and corporations, but UVa is an agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and past precedent dictates it is "entitled to the protection of the immunity of the state." In fact, the majority ruled that treating the university as subject to the Act would create internal inconsistencies that would "do superior damage to FATA as a whole."

One of the justices dissented, and argued that FATA should apply. That said, he ruled that Cuccinelli's suit should be thrown out, as it never specified any conduct by Mann that constituted a violation. The nature of the ruling gives Cuccinelli no ability to target the university at all, and thus seems to end this phase of the legal attack on Mann. This still leaves him facing a Freedom of Information Act suit in Virginia, brought by a private organization that calls itself the American Tradition Institute.